Desperately seeking surprise: what we don’t know about the All New HTC One

As we’ve mentioned on countless episodes of the Pocketnow Weekly, the HTC One is one of the most widely-leaked devices in history. Thanks to an explosion of prematurely-released info, including a lengthy and rather strange hands-on video and a photo of the retail packaging, we know many secrets concerning the device that’s come to be known, around these parts, as the #ANHO.

But with the official announcement still more than a week away, there are a few details surrounding the All New HTC One specs that remain hidden to us. Personally, I’m enjoying being none the wiser (I always prefer to be surprised at product unveilings) but I thought it might be helpful to aggregate these mystery areas for those keeping track of what stones remain unturned.

Camera

Sure, we know it’s called the Duo, and we also know that second eyeball around back is there to enable some focus-assist features. But we don’t know some crucial fundamentals, like the new camera’s resolution. We have yet to hear whether Zoe has seen any improvements since last year, and we’re also in the dark as to what the new shooter’s low-light performance might be like. Considering how important the camera was to the original HTC One, we’re expecting quite a bit from this year’s model.

Sapphire?

Our own Stephen Schenck recently indulged in some wonderful hypothesizing with regard to the All New One’s display covering, taking clues from a post-MWC teaser from HTC:

We see the formula (Al(OH)3) for aluminum hydroxide, which is a hop, skip, and a jump away from aluminum oxide – grow that as a single crystal, and you get a little thing we like to call synthetic sapphire. We’d love to start screaming “OMG the new One is going to get a sapphire screen,” but even if this isn’t leading us astray, it could easily be talking about a smaller component, like one or both of those cameras. Still, very cool all the same.

Personally, I find the probability of a sapphire screen pretty low, but I wouldn’t put it past materials-obsessed HTC to make it happen.

Voice clarity

The original HTC One featured some of the best outgoing voice quality we’d ever seen in a smartphone. Unfortunately, it turned out that that was thanks to HTC unwittingly using parts covered by a Nokia patent. Now that that’s all been settled, though, I’m eager to see what noise-cancellation and high-quality voice tech HTC brings to the table with the All New One. The absence of Beats on this handset should free up some space in the announcement schedule for HTC to fill us in on whatever new microphone tech they’re working with this year.

More Mysteries

Surely you’ve got some All New HTC One specs curiosity not yet sated by one of those nefarious leaks. Drop it in the comments below, then settle in alongside us as we hunker down for the long eight-day wait ahead!

Michael Fisher has followed the world of mobile technology for over ten years as hobbyist, retailer, and reviewer. A lengthy stint as a Sprint Nextel employee and a long-time devotion to webOS have cemented his love for the underdog platforms of the world. In addition to serving as Pocketnow's Reviews Editor, Michael is a stage, screen, and voice actor, as well as co-founder of a profitable YouTube-based business. He lives in Boston, MA.Read more about Michael Fisher!